Posts Tagged ‘Radio Bart

“You know, Marge, Bart’s really gonna like my birthday present this year. It won’t be like those shoe trees I got him last year, or the shelf paper I bought him for Christmas. I’ll buy his love yet.” – Homer Simpson

First we got a nice long break from Zombie Simpsons, and then they made their triumphant return by dropping two great big steaming piles back-to-back. The first one, “Diggs”, is among the more tone deaf episodes I can recall in a while. It’s about a mentally ill kid who likes falcons and then gets hauled off to a loony bin for the rest of his life. They play it for sad, but it’s so stupid and nonsensical that I couldn’t register anything more than bemusement.

The second was a Sideshow Bob episode where he’s a scientist. In a turn that nobody could or should have seen coming, he’s also a genetically enhanced superman who throws himself off a dam for some reason. Plus there were a bunch of teenagers in a church abstinence program that made no sense for them to be in. They also briefly fought Sideshow Bob for some other reason.

– The couch gag, by Sylvain Chomet (a/k/a the Triplets of Belleville guy), was kinda interesting and managed to eat 60 seconds. It’s all gonna be downhill from here.

– They should’ve made the couch gag longer. The first two scenes, one in church the other a montage of Homer asking Bart to repay his $20, were pure filler.

– And now Bart is eating things for money, including a dead frog that Jimbo just happened to have on the playground. Does any of this make sense? Of course not! It doesn’t even make sense within this scene, as Jimbo comes along offering Bart the full $20 he needs, making the rest of it pointless.

– Okay, having the Potter boy says “Habemus Papam” after the falcon craps was kinda funny.

– But is immediately followed by a Quahog style quick cut to Homer yelling at the dog to sit.

– “I wasn’t drinking, I was learning that nature isn’t a complete waste of space”, “That doesn’t sound like you”, “But it does sound like the kind of lie you’d make up after the first time you got blitzed”. Telling us what we just saw, then telling us what we already know, and then returning to a joke that had already gone on way too long. It’s hard to imagine how the writing on this should could get any worse.

– And how about some falconry montage? Hey, at least there’s no dialogue!

– That’s right, Krusty’s just standing out in a field without his nose. Carry on.

– Nice of the kid to just leap off the tree and get the plot moving.

– Why is Homer caring for the bird? Better question: why am I asking?

– “I never heard of this new hospital, so I looked it up and printed it out” – Ah, there’s the pointless exposition that had been absent for almost twenty seconds.

– They’re really being weird about the fact that the kid is going to a mental hospital. Like, that’s where their story is sending them, but they won’t even mention what it is at this dinner table scene. It’s idiocy through a weird combination of sensitivity and insensitivity.

– “I obtained the pass to enter the Springfield falconry contest, which is what Freedom and I were training for when we first met you.” – This one sentence neatly encapsulates the entire mess that is this episode. This comes with less than three minutes to go, but is the first mention of the “falconry contest” that makes up the ending. It requires a nonsensical “one day pass” from the mental institute to which they haphazardly committed this (apparently parent-less) kid. And it negates pretty much everything we’ve seen with this kid up to this point since none of it had any bearing on what he wanted to do.

– The falcons are free. And now he’s going back to the mental institute . . . on his bike which he has for some reason.

– And then Milhouse appears from nowhere to try and salvage the uber-downer of an ending.

What a complete and utter mess of an episode, and even they knew it. (Why else would they dump it at 7:30?) They got themselves in way over their heads with the lonesome schizophrenic kid, sent him to a nut house, then had to walk back their own story to wrap things up. Meanwhile, Bart went through a wide range of short term emotions that also made no sense. Then it ends with the family at dinner eating duck as the big pre-credits joke . . . which leads back to the sad piano music they played over the doomed and now incarcerated kid. I don’t know what that was supposed to be, and I’m not sure they did either. Whatever, it’s time for round two:

- A short couch gag, haven’t seen that in a while.

– So Taco Tuesday comes every week but kills Willie? Remember when the stampede was just for PE signup day?

– This is the last episode with Marcia Wallace’s voice. They give her a nice send off at the end, showing her happy with Ned. I can’t be the only one who finds that completely spoiled by having Lunchlady Doris voice some utterly unnecessary lines at the beginning.

– “Helen Lovejoy is posting the spring volunteer sign up sheet, in five minutes every good task will be taken.” – Maybe they did remember PE signup day. They certainly remembered “tell the audience what’s happening” day.

– Thrill to the crossing the street scene!

– There is no plausible reason for these kids to be in a church abstinence program. But these are the teenagers they have in the cast, so in the abstinence program they shall be.

– Since we’re apparently feeling the loss of dead cast members in this one, this fake YouTube video really could’ve used Phil Hartman. It’d still probably be bad, but it wouldn’t be this bad.

– It really is too much to ask for a single scene to make sense. After the video, Lisa wants to run off to do research on a topic that she knew enough to call a PTA meeting about? The mind reels.

– That GMO buffet went nice and quick.

– I don’t remember which episode it was that had people’s faces falling off, but it sure deserved a callback.

– Why would Marge think finger puppets(!) would help explain things to teenagers?

– Now Homer’s at the abstinence meeting for some reason.

– Hey, a plot point just literally fell on Lisa only to have Sideshow Bob demonstrate his superhuman strength by saving her.

– Bob tossed off his concrete block now instead of earlier because . . .?

– “And we’re scared of that because . . . “, then Bob explains. Whew.

– They’re on top of a dam now. No idea why, but they are.

– “We’re here to stop you” is Marge’s line right as she and the teens pull up from nowhere to confront Bob. (Well, Marge pulls up in the car, the teens just appear.) It’s expository and nonsensical, so at least that fits with the rest of the episode. Everything else about the ending? Not so much.

– Bob just jumped off the dam, remembered he had gills, and stepped on a rake underwater. I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it again, but this is fan service at the lowest common denominator.

In that interview with Jean I linked on Friday, he mentioned why they don’t do more Sideshow Bob episodes:

“I’m really, really careful about approving new Sideshow Bob episodes, because I think every one of them is so special, and I never want to feel like we’re burning the character out,”

You made him a genetic superman with fucking gills! Could some reporter on his next conference call ask him what “burning the character out” would look like? Would he have to become a cyborg? Travel to another dimension? What’s left?

Anyway, the ratings are in and they are the worst ever, both of them. The awkward and unwatchable mental kid episode at 7:30 had just 2.65 million viewers wonder why he didn’t have any parents. The Sideshow-Bob-Has-Superpowers-Now episode made just 3.73 million viewers wonder what they hell they just watched. That’s good for places #1 and #2 on the all time least watched list.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“Don’t worry, son. Just cause you’re trapped in a hole doesn’t mean you can’t live a rich and full life. I brought you your Krusty doll.” – Homer Simpson “Ow! Knock it off you bald boob!” – Bart Simpson “Hey, don’t make me come down there!” – Homer Simpson “I’d like to see you fit!” – Bart Simpson

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“But this isn’t about show business, this is about some kid down a hole, or something. And we’ve all got to do what we can.” – Sting

Dead Homer Society is coming at you live from my new and pointlessly overpowered PC; the laptop is dead, long live the laptop. (Windows 8 is not nearly as terrible as advertised once you install Classic Shell so it can actually work with a mouse and keyboard. Jebus, Microsoft, do you enjoy creating headaches for yourselves and everyone else?) This week we’ve got two Simpsons mainstays both being their naturally awesome selves, one by being nice to a fan, the other by cross dressing. Try to guess which, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. We’ve also got three links to long and thoughtful articles about the show. There’s one about the “Terror at 5 1/2 Feet” Halloween segment, one about “Marge Be Not Proud”, and one about how the show can’t string a story together anymore. In addition to all that, we’ve got some awesome fan made Bart shoes, a newfangled bootleg t-shirt, a fantastic rendition of the theme song, and some excellent usage.

Enjoy.

The Simpsons Theme Song – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this epically excellent one-man, multi-instrument rendition of the theme song:

He even did the elongated circus version complete with whistle! Well done.

In the past few years there has been a rekindling of the relationship I once had with my spirit. One of my treasured activities is going on long walks where I find peace in my thoughts. I also enjoy time spent with friends and family. When I caught The Simpsons re-run it was an epiphany. “That was it,” I thought, “that was exactly how it felt”.

Comic collage – Exactly what it says. There’s quite a few Simpsons characters mixed in with everything from the Smurfs and Peanuts to stuff I don’t recognize at all.

Bart Simpson is the quintessential bad kid. He talks back to his teachers, picks on his sister, and (at least in early seasons of The Simpsons) he’s quick to tell any figure of authority, “Don’t have a cow, man.”

Among the many, many things Zombie Simpsons has lost is Bart’s reflexive disdain for authority. It just isn’t something they do anymore because Bart, like Homer and many others, seems to understand now that there are no consequences and that he can get away with anything. Which leads to this:

Bart realizes that he’s capable of stealing—capable of carrying out a bad act. And of all the things to take, he chooses a video game. He’s using his newfound nefarious powers to grasp desperately for an escape. The powers work, but the escape doesn’t happen. For a minute, this bad kid realizes he’s bad.

And while that’s all well and good for character development and hugging, it’s a real departure from what the show used to be. The whole thing’s worth a read.

I love the role of Principal Skinner in this Treehouse of Horror piece as well – he borders humourously on Nurse Ratched territory at times. “I’ve gotten word that a child’s using his imagination, and I’ve come to put a stop to it,” is one select quote. “Right or wrong, young man, your behaviour was disruptive. Perhaps spending the remainder of your life in a mad house will teach you some manners,” is another one that hits the spot particularly well.

And perhaps that’s the most chilling thing about this story. Firstly, that Bart’s apparent madness was in fact rational, revealing everybody else’s sane desire to remain calm as totally irrational given the circumstances. That’s ultimately what he gets sent to a mental institution for as well: disturbing the routine way of things rather than actually being mentally ill. Oh, how the mental health care sector has a chequered past in that regard which The Simpsons, as ever, satirises brilliantly.

Classic Halloween segments tend to get more disturbing the more you think about them.

Last September, I started seeing rumor mill about The International Food and Wine Festival restaurant closing to make way for a new Simpsons themed eatery. Well rumor turned to truth and then grew to rumor…AND EXPLODED!!! Now we sit at beginning of February and all sorts of construction is going on. Rumor mill says you have this to look forward to: The Krusty Burger, Moe’s Tavern, Kentucky Fried Panda, New Simpsons Flat Ride near MIB, and Other Facades.

The Simpsons has always been one of my favorite shows, and I know I’ve missed a ton of the more recent ones. I’m especially excited because there are so many pop-culture references in the show that I’m sure I didn’t get the first time through as a kid. I really think watching through them again is going to be a blast.

Sounds fun, though my strong advice would be to quit sometime early in the double digit seasons. Nobody needs to torment themselves like that.

(Check the video for the single on YOUtube. It stars long-time Russell fan Harry Shearer from The Simpsons and Spinal Tap, and is a beautifully touching little vignette/short story. Worth a watch all the way through, you ADHD kidz).

I have now seen Mr. Burns put on makeup and pad his bra. The look on his face when room service shows up is hilarious.

Play game Lisa Simpson Dress Up Flash online free games at Y8.com – I can’t entirely recommend you click on this as it is a hacktacular flash “game” where all you do is click through different outfits and accessories for a completely static image of Lisa. I just find it amusing because the background music is the piano song from the old Incredible Hulk TV show. It’s such an odd confluence of unlicensed pop culture.

To me, however, the job of the filmmaker is to effectively tell a story, and I really feel like we were let down on that one. Fundamentally, it’s a great story, but there is so much going on (much of which is irrelevant to the story) that it loses its cohesion and starts seeming less like a good film and more like an “onion on my belt” rant.

I’m 31 years old now and I’ve been a vegetarian since I was in 6th grade or so. There were certainly different degrees of vegetarianism as I got older and as I learned more about what that really meant.

I have to admit that when I saw the episode of the Simpsons when Lisa became a vegetarian I felt her pain.

I came from a household that was strictly meat and potatoes. And that may be why I became the type of “vegetarian” that I did at an early age.

I mean, it’s not the inconsistencies of characters (In ‘Please Homer Don’t Hammer ‘Em’, Bart is revealed allergic to shrimp. Who knew?) or the amount of injuries sustained over the years that are never mentioned. The writers probably do this to mock one thing or another, as is often good about The Simpsons.

It’s the fact that, as writers, it promotes flimsy plotting and a ‘happy ending’ that real life cannot give. It gives watchers the wrong idea that something can be fixed like that *clicks fingers* and gives non-writers the idea that all stories must end on a high note.

When The Simpsons was still itself, they always had a way of ending that was both happy and still mean and/or cynical, like Bart and Homer taunting Nelson after the soap box derby race, Selma describing Jub Jub as a “little version of me”, and Maggie calling Homer “Daddy” when he’s out of the room and can’t hear her. These days? Not so much.

I’ve written before about 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, and Community. For a while there, I had a real hard time distinguishing between the three which one was my favorite. Usually, it was whatever show I’d seen most recently. But, with less-than-stellar 6th and 7th seasons, I’d say 30 Rock has diminished in my eyes (much the same way the Simpsons fell from grace after season 9).

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“You know, Bart, I don’t think this is such a bad present. Maybe you just shouldn’t talk into it as loud as your father does.” – Marge Simpson

As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another. More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things. The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud. So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “nightmarish”).

I’ve mentioned already, and do so again below, that this episode was thick with wretchedly unneeded exposition. There were plenty of examples, but one that struck me as both particularly illustrative of Zombie Simpsons and especially pointless came near the beginning when Homer was wrapping up his stupid apology party. Here’s Homer asking the crowd if they forgive him:

The crowd cheers, and then they cut to Carl who says, “Ain’t no problem that free food and free booze won’t fix.” They immediately cut back to Homer:

Standing right next to the microphone, Homer says, out loud, “Free? Uh . . .”. Naturally, no one hears this. The next time Homer speaks . . .

. . . everyone can hear him again. Homer’s next line is yet another expository word evacuation about his sheets being dry now, though at least for this last one they bothered to get rid of the microphone:

Not only is this another example of Zombie Simpsons forgetting that people who aren’t in a shot are still in a scene, but both of the lines no one managed to hear didn’t tell the audience anything we didn’t already know. Zombie Simpsons: making scenes unbelievable for lines that don’t need to be there.

Mad Jon: Do you want to get started on this?

Charlie Sweatpants: No point delaying things.

Mad Jon: I guess not.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’d like to begin by asking a simple question. When did they start treating Frink’s insane inventions seriously?

Mad Jon: I suppose when it became convenient.

I couldn’t tell you the exact point in time however.

Charlie Sweatpants: Like everything else, I assume it was a slow process.

Mad Jon: It happened so gradually, I didn’t even notice.

Charlie Sweatpants: The Death Ray prototype was funny, the Gamble-Tron was funny. Then at some point it was self tapping shoes, and from there it’s just gotten worse.

In Season 9 he invented a teleporter, but that was a Halloween episode.

By my count, this was the second time he’s invented a machine that let Homer probe the depths of his unconscious.

But without actually looking things up, I guess I’d have to go with the self tapping shoes. Though at least in that episode they took a stab at it making sense that he would run into Lisa. Here he literally fell from the sky.

Mad Jon: Literally.

Charlie Sweatpants: Greek myths make more sense than that.

Mad Jon: The thing that bothered me the most was that Marge wasn’t really surprised. Here’s Frink, out of nowhere, and now he’s got an idea to solve a problem he already knows about that is affecting her sex life, and they go right to it. There wasn’t any attempt at a decent plot progression. They went right for the gratification.

Charlie Sweatpants: I didn’t even notice that, but you’re right.

Mad Jon: But that kind of story telling has been the norm for a while, so meh. I believe there are worse problems here.

Charlie Sweatpants: Many.

Hell, in that same vein, why in the name of Christopher Nolan did the cops show up and break into the Simpson house?

Mad Jon: That was a big problem. Not only is it apparently illegal (for some un-disclosed reason) to use a machine on willing subjects to probe their dreams, it is also immediately detectable by all three local police officers.

Charlie Sweatpants: It was one of those things that was so blatant that I sat up and noticed even through my usual Zombie Simpsons stupor.

Mad Jon: I even stopped playing on my phone!

Charlie Sweatpants: And that was before he and Frink got into a fight which mattered for a second before being dropped entirely.

Mad Jon: A slow motion fist fight.

Charlie Sweatpants: We’ll just add that to the list of shit that made no sense. I think they had an "Inception" bingo card they were trying to fill out.

Mad Jon: Hopefully somebody won a beating.

Charlie Sweatpants: Not likely.

Though, to be fair, there were plenty of things that had nothing to do with anything. For example, why was Death normal, and then it had a jetpack, and then it was Homer’s mom?

Mad Jon: Is that how she got there?

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, that’s what I’m confused about. If she was there the whole time, why did nothing happen earlier. But if she wasn’t there the whole time, then how did she get there?

Even if it was just Homer’s mom in that final dream, why was she dressed as Death?

And, yes, I realize I’m asking questions that no one bothered to come up with an answer for.

Mad Jon: I suppose we could find this answer along with a real explanation of why all that crap had anything to do with Homer wetting the bed.

Absolutely no foreshadowing at all. All of the sudden he’s wetting the bed. And after a nightmarish (for me) adventure through everyone’s dreams or something, we find out he wants his parents to be together?

Seriously?

Charlie Sweatpants: Oh no, that has an answer. It was about fish and a marriage and Cletus and possibly the Alan Parson’s Project, which I think was some sort of hovercraft.

But even that didn’t make sense, since going fishing was apparently what triggered everything.

I’ll include my usual I-don’t-care-about-inter-episode-continuity disclaimer, but it’s not like we’ve only ever seen Homer go fishing once or something. The man likes fishing.

Mad Jon: Was it? I never really understood the trigger.

Charlie Sweatpants: I was also unclear, because it didn’t make any sense even within this episode, but they did at least say that was the reason.

Mad Jon: I though at the end they were going to switch from the Inception type episode to the end scene from that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he was an insane guy who thought he was a cop.

Charlie Sweatpants: J. Edgar?

Mad Jon: No, it was about an island or something.

Charlie Sweatpants: Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Mad Jon: The thread that would bind that episode would be Leonardo DiCaprio, which is more of a thread than usual.

Charlie Sweatpants: True enough.

Changing the subject slightly, this is a direct quote from the middle of the episode, and might not even be in the top five for most grotesque exposition:

"Deep down I must be feeling guilty about getting my friends in trouble."

And that wasn’t even the time Homer exposited while standing in front of a live microphone in front of all of his co workers.

Mad Jon: I have a note on my paper when that quote happened:

- Possibly worst plot forwarding dialogue this season.

Charlie Sweatpants: I made a note as well, "Hello, exposition police, there’s been a homicide."

Mad Jon: …. it made more sense to me when it happened.

Charlie Sweatpants: So did mine.

Mad Jon: There has been some serious explanatory dialogue this season, but this may be the most obvious piece of evidence that the writers either don’t care or really think that their remaining viewers are complete idiots.

Possibly both.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’d vote both. I mean, despite all the "let us tell you what’s happening while you watch it", there were still a bunch of things that wouldn’t have made sense if you hadn’t seen Inception or at least knew a little about it.

Mad Jon: That’s usually a bad thing.

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah. Here it was more of a lateral move.

Mad Jon: I guess they felt the need to go deeper.

Charlie Sweatpants: I felt I needed a stronger sedative.

Mad Jon: Touche salesman.

Overall, however, I feel the most bothersome part was that the plot as a whole was devoted to Homer as a bedwetter. I think he even mentions towards the beginning that this is the last embarrassing thing he had never done or something. When I read the description on my DVR, it elicited a "Sigh…. Ok."

This is what it’s come to. This.

Charlie Sweatpants: There is a steep and undeniable decline between relatively oblique references to Milhouse and Ralph being bedwetters and it being the main element in a plot about Homer.

Mad Jon: In the way there is a steep and undeniable decline between a can of Pringles, and an empty can of Pringles that your brother has shit in, yes.

Charlie Sweatpants: Ha.

Can I assume you have some equally feculent vitriol stored up about the brief but wholly dumb scenes at the power plant?

Mad Jon: I dunno, that took a lot of effort.

However, I do have thoughts.

I thought the only serviceable line happened there. When Carl stated that he was pretty sure the referee they beat up was actually a kid who works at Foot Locker.

I didn’t necessarily laugh, but it was short and sweet.

Charlie Sweatpants: I did like that line, but it felt like the kind of thing that could’ve been done better.

Mad Jon: Of course, but the hindsight of the last few years tells me that it could have been much, much worse.

Charlie Sweatpants: Also true. It just bugs me when the best things are those cheap setup-setup-punchline type gags.

Mad Jon: True enough.

Other than that, I was a little bothered that Homer’s first trip to that particular employer in sometime was only a lead-in to part of the plot about bedwetting that made him think he has wronged his ‘friends’.

And didn’t another car get out before Homer did?

Charlie Sweatpants: It looked like it. But it also looked like Burns was staring right the fuck at Homer when he was getting pissed off, and they dropped that like it never happened.

Mad Jon: Oh well.

Charlie Sweatpants: The fact that Burns had him up on the stage was also particularly annoying. I know Burns is incompetent now, but after having him watch Homer steal stuff, putting him up there as an example was particularly galling.

Mad Jon: And how does he know Barney doesn’t work there?

Charlie Sweatpants: And why would Barney think he does work there?

Mad Jon: Equally valid question.

Charlie Sweatpants: Anything else here? As usual, I have a small list of little things that sucked but were so unrelated to anything that they can only qualify as minor: Bart dancing in the sky, the way Marge didn’t notice the bed wetting, the ending that hailed for no reason. But I don’t have much to say about them other than that they made no sense and weren’t funny, which isn’t the world’s most insightful commentary.

Mad Jon: Yeah, there were a bunch of little things, but as you have stated, most do not warrant discussion, even from someone as petty as I.

I don’t have anything else constructive or otherwise to add.

Charlie Sweatpants: That, at least, is in keeping with the spirit of the episode.

Useful Legal Tidbit

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